Some Final Words on Foursquare.⁠↗

Translation: The Foursquare acquisition was a $0 outcome for equity holders – $0 for preferred, $0 for common. It’s bittersweet to see these details surface publicly – at least now there’s an opportunity to comment on them.

The CEO job is impossibly hard and often thankless, but even in the darkest of scenarios there’s a way to lead with grace and humility. To many current and former employees, the final chapter of the company felt disrespectful. To provide a single example, current employees told me that, despite an in-person all hands meeting, they learned their shares would be worth nothing via an email from Foursquare’s legal team. Former employees learned these details via an email from Carta, with details buried in a 125-page PDF sent from Foursquare’s legal team. No single individual stood up to own (or even acknowledge) the outcome – the antithesis of the transparency and trust that was so core to our early DNA.

To anyone building, It’s okay to fall in love with the company you’re building, but don’t deny yourself the ability to get closure and move on just because the company itself hasn’t yet experienced an exit or ending.